THAT WHICH DOESN'T KILL YOU
19, January, 2012
So last week I go to the gum doc for the first round of surgery…at 9 in the morning. I thought I’d been pretty cool about it in the weeks leading up to the appointment, but when I woke up this morning the old heart was hammering away like a crazed woodpecker. As I leave the apartment my dear Joel tells me not to worry, that the dentist will take good care of me. I hear myself say “Yeah, if he’s not hung-over.” Where the hell did that come from?
Half an hour later I’m in the chair; I’ve been swabbed twice with topical anesthetic and given 3 needles. The nitrous oxide is trickling through a mask on my face that has me feeling like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of The Lambs. We’re ready to go. And then I can’t swallow. I mean, I CANNOT SWALLOW. Total paralysis.
Do you know how many times you reflexively swallow per minute? Me neither, but it’s more than you think, and you don’t think about it when you do it, it just happens, like breathing. But now I can’t. And when I rip off the mask and tell the dentist, my voice sounds like I have a cleft palate.
All those Zen thoughts I’ve had about greeting death when it comes? Forget it. I AM TERRIFIED. And now I’m frantically running through the possible scenarios should I not be able to swallow, ever again. I think, God, I’ll have to sleep sitting up for the rest of my life. Then I realize, oh no, I won’t be able to eat. Oh. So, basically, I’m dead already.
By now my heart is a woodpecker on steroids. I’m sitting upright and spitting into the sink at least 15 times a minute, which, as I have just learned, is approximately the number of times per minute we swallow. The dentist is assuring me that it will pass, that some of the topical anesthetic must have gone down my throat. I think, why? I’ve had that stuff applied a hundred times and it never happened before. Then I wonder if maybe he wasn’t paying attention when he was doing it…because while he was swabbing he had told me how at breakfast this morning his girlfriend had told him he needed to take better care of himself, that he was eating too much and drinking too much wine. Oh boy. She said that at breakfast? This morning? Imagine what he was doing last night.
I can’t swallow for 2 hours. Go on, I dare you, try it and see how long you last. I leave, taking a box of tissues with me into which I spit while sitting in the back seat of taxi. I try not to make eye contact with the driver in the rearview mirror. I think spitting in public might not be kosher where he comes from. I go home, cry, and get into bed for the rest of the day. My daughter calls to see how I’m doing, when I tell her what happened she says “It was a gift, Mum. Just imagine if it hadn’t happened and he’d gone straight to the scalpel.”
I’m interviewing a new periodontist next week. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime I’m all stocked up on Internet info, a vibrating toothbrush, tea tree oil toothpicks, floss and a special mouthwash for gums. All of which I now have an intimate relationship with 3 times a day.
And so it goes. More Gratitude: I’m still alive. This past Monday was my 23rd anniversary of sobriety. The days are crisp and sunny, the skeletal trees zinging with light. The sunsets over the river are knocking themselves out of the park, their reds and oranges a dramatic outburst before nightfall. More gratitude. And Joel and I are in the final stages of the Provence book; the choices have been made, 100’s of choices that for both of us have been made over these last 8 weeks of culling: this photograph, this essay; drop this paragraph, switch this image for that one. Change the tense, take a risk; add a piece, delete a comma. And all the while checking with the editor and the designer – both of whom are terrific – while having the courage to defend a choice and the wisdom to let go of some darlings.
It’s a wonderful and mysterious process, to take what seems like finite material and find its malleability, to apply the necessary pressure in order to expose the weaknesses, and to caress it all the time, like wet clay.
I hear my brother did a bit of gardening last week, having survived major surgery and weeks of infections. I can see him puttering in his English garden shed. More Gratitude.